Twenty years ago I helped my Norwegian Elkhound bitch whelp our first litter of puppies. It was such an awesome experience that I not only wrote about it then in these very pages but I continued the process over and over again until this week when Jinx and I whelped the seventh generation in my line of Champion show dogs.

In 1986 when Mumbles was about to whelp my first litter as breeder I spent the week before camped out in the bathtub filled with pillows and blankets. Space was tight in the tiny four-room cottage in Southbury and somehow I nestled the whelping box between the toilet, the sink and the tub. When I sat on the toilet I was able to peer directly into the box and see the sucking whelps.

Whelping boxes are curious pieces of furniture with a niche use. That first box, a small wooden construction barely large enough for the bitch to lie down in was built by then husband. Despite the pint-sized digs, my brood bitches still spread out when a small army of probing mouths marched towards Mount Mammary Gland looking for a free meal. One design aspect was that Box #1 could be perfectly lined with the then nine-column wide Bee. Many a pup crawled across Bee Lines, Top of the Mountain, and the police blotter that I wrote weekly.

The paint job was a unique blend of sky blue for the side panels with a white floor. The front slats could be added to build up height as the pups started to walk, jump, and eventually try to escape their “Ed TV-like” world into the larger universe that was the bathroom floor. After five litters that box was retired.

Whelping Box #2 was a hand me down used only once in Southbury for my last litter whelped in my “shack” of a house as someone once called it. My current husband Ray, builder of Box #3, was on a train once heading back from New York City with a group of friends when “someone” a friend of friend, remarked how he had to return home to go walk his dog.

“What kind of dog do you have?” Ray inquired. 

“A Norwegian Elkhound,” the man answered.

Ray being the amateur detective played dumb.

“Oh, where did you get it from?”

The man went on to explain how there was this woman in Southbury and her husband (who curiously matched the description of the builder of Box #1) had a stud dog that was used for a litter of puppies in town. He went to the stud dog owner’s house to pick up his new pup. 

“Yeah, and she lived in this ‘shack’ with this guy,” the man said. But before the man could insert his foot any further into his mouth, Ray, the ultimate diplomat, uttered the ultimate line.

“That’s my wife you are talking about.”  

I can just imagine the silence.

“But you’re right she did live in a shack,” offered the builder of Box #3. I can then imagine the conversation turned to poking fun at the builder of Box #1 followed by their mutual love and admiration for the Norwegian Elkhound.

So this week, I anxiously awaited the arrival of my 10th litter in 20 years. Dozens of puppies have squealed and squirmed their way across Boxes #1 through 3. Box #3 has all the high tech gadgets of the 21st century including something I call the ‘puppy wok.’  Embedded in the floor of this rather spacious model is a flat, round Teflon-like pan that heats to a comfortable temperature for the young pups. The box is the center piece of a finished room in my basement surrounded by a sofa, an entertainment center, computer, and dresser to hold all the “tools” one might need during whelping, including a copy of the latest edition of The Book of the Bitch for reference.

No more bathtubs for me! 

This time around I took a nap on the sofa and at 1 am awoke to the faint licking noises that announce the birth of a pup. Jinx had delivered two beautiful pups, a boy and a girl. They looked like little fat sausages at birth, so I tentatively named them Pattie and Link until I see their personalities come through enough to give them more emotionally complete names.  

Now that the whelping is done the pups are squealing and squirming across Box #3. My next step is to call the folks on my waiting list for puppies. Some of these hard-core Elkhound fans have been on my list for years. But near the top of my list is “someone” who has met the maker of all my whelping boxes.  

Lisa Peterson, a long-time breeder of Norwegian Elkhounds, is the Director of Club Communications at the American Kennel Club. Contact her at ask@lisa-peterson.com  or Dogma Publishing, P.O. Box 307, Newtown, CT 06470.